⛤Fairies, Elves and Vile in Slav History and Myth⛤
Many of us know a lot about Greek, Roman and Viking mythology but few of us have ever heard about Slavic folklore.
This is partly due to the attitude of the Church, which throughout history was mostly negative towards mythological beings, holidays and customs from Slavic mythology.
The myth of fairies (“vile”) is common to many Slavic peoples, and is one of the most widespread and oldest myths.
We get the first information about fairies in our area from Procopius of Caesarea (6th century), who says that the Slavs "respect rivers and nymphs, as well as other demons, and offer sacrifices to all of them, and on that occasion also do fortune-telling."
In Slavic mythology there are only fairies as supernatural beings, mysterious women who live in nature, mostly on mountains, by lakes and streams or in them, next to springs or in the ground, in special caves and pits.
Fairies resemble human women, boast a special beauty and have no wings.
They are tall and slender, with lush hair that is either loose or braided.
They wear white clothes, and sometimes they have a golden crown, a golden star or an evergreen wreath on their head.
In some stories, fairies have several physical flaws.
In one version, their hair stinks terribly, and in another version, instead of human feet, they have cat's paws, horse hooves or mule and donkey hooves, and goat or cow legs, which they then hide well.
Maybe that's why fairies love horses so much.
If someone's horse stays outside the barn overnight, they play with it until dawn and braid its mane.
Fairies are mostly good or neutral, but you have to be careful around them because they are easy to anger.
They help people by giving them useful things, they look after the flock while shepherds sleep, heal people with herbs or teach them which herbs have healing properties.
They show the way to a lost traveler, strengthen the soldiers and put to sleep a crying child in the cradle.
Sometimes the fairies make it a condition that the person to whom they gave the gift must not look at the gift until he gets home.
If the person bows down and looks, the gift turns into coal, eggshell, and the like.
The four-leaf clover is known in Slavic countries as fairy grass, and the person who finds it will bring luck and wealth, but also great misfortune if he throws the clover into the fire.
Admittedly, sometimes they know how to steal a child they particularly like (most often a beautiful and gifted child) and raise it as their own.
Sometimes they steal a child and plant their child instead (like changelings).
Although there are no elves, fairies like to seduce human youths and have offspring with them.
Men who are somehow related to the fairies are called elves, elves, or elves, but they are definitely of human origin.
If someone finds the fairies combing at the well, they take him with them.
They like to take revenge on humans if they break their oath or if they do not accept fairy friendship.
Those who accept fairy friendship often become clairvoyant or become skilled clairvoyants.
In addition to children, fairies also know how to kidnap adults.
A myth was recorded in Novigrad that says that fairies know how to kidnap a man and give him the knowledge of divination. They do this by taking him to the mountain where they live. The initiation of man takes place next to an old tree, which is a frequent initiation symbol in many mythologies.
It was also believed that fairies feed on honey, lambs, little pigs or eat lard.
Word comes that they ate the crumbs that were left on the table after people had eaten their meal.
Fairies do not drink water from anywhere but pure springs.
Sometimes their power was thought to reside in the golden belt or scarf they wore and if it was taken away, they lost their power.
That power was great, and this is best described by the legend that says that the Arena in Pula was built by fairies in one night.
They took stones from Učka and stacked them in a circle.
But fairies, in this version, are creatures of the night and when they heard the song of the first hen in the morning, they had to stop working.
Because of this, the Arena remained unfinished.
Suđenice (destinies, sujenices, birth women) are also some kind of fairy creatures that determine a person's fate at the moment of birth.
There are usually three judges who decide the child's fate after birth, and it will be as the last judge says.
They are invisible to people unless a person has a fern flower with them, and a woman in labor can hear them if she stays up all night.
In some regions, there was a custom of leaving food on the table, which the judges would then eat and then be gentle and benevolent in divination of the child's fate.
Women who claimed to be particularly skilled in healing and that fairies had taught them to do so were called elves.
There is a case dating back to 1660 when a notice was received "to the captain of Janjina in the Republic of Dubrovnik, Ivan Gučetić, that there were elves and witches in his captaincy". The captain ordered one of those elves to be brought because he was interested in what elves could do.
The elf replied that she knew how to heal and that she had been taught it by Aunt Vila, who appeared to her in a white robe, in the form of a nun.
She also claimed to be able to tell who was harmed by a witch and whether that person would recover or not.
From this statement, the mixing of the older mythology about fairies with newer Christian elements is obvious.
The reform of the Church, the fierce Protestant criticism of the situation in the Christian world of that time and the Council of Trent (1545-1563) initiated processes that strongly influenced Europe.
Namely, in addition to the reform of the Church, there was also a "reform of folk culture" when elves were put in a negative context, even though they had not previously attracted too much attention in church circles.
In the 17th century, elves were equated with witches, which meant that they were equally subject to persecution.
The practice of persecuting women accused of possessing supernatural powers was put to an end by Maria Theresa in 1756, and two years later, courts in Slavic countries were prohibited from conducting any trials against witches, elves and sorcery without the empress's direct permission.
⛤Isidora⛤